Experience:
• Managing medium to large projects and leading high functioning small Design Teams
• Managing medium to large projects and leading high functioning small Design Teams
• Continuously conducting user research efforts, user testing strategies, analytics inquiries, surveys, and interviews to gain insights about user preferences and behaviors
• Involved in all aspects of the design lifecycle from early wireframes and prototype testing all the way to launching exceptional products adhering to branding and UI style guides
• Working as part of Agile Teams of User Experience Professionals, Interactive Designers, Developers, Business Strategists, and Technical Product and Development Specialists
Technical Skills:
Wireframe: Figma, Sketch, Craft, Omnigraffle, Keynote, and Visio
Prototyping: Figma, UXpin, Axure, and Popapp
AI: Midjourney, ChatGPT, and Figjam
Agile: Kanban Methodologies and Lean UX Practices
Project Management: Jira, TFS, Trello, Asana
Adobe: After Effects, Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat
Microsoft: Excel, PowerPoint, Word
Programming: HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript
Specialties:
Design thinking, strategy, team building, collaboration, sketching, wire-framing, mobile design, responsive design, user models, user research, competitive analysis, heuristic evaluation, information architecture, usability testing, interactive design, and prototyping
Bio:
Luis Ponce de León is an award-winner and published UX/UI Designer. He has over 20 years of experience working for digital firms and companies such as Razorfish, Viewpoint Construction Software, WebMD, and Vacasa. His digital work includes clients such as IBM, Intel, Wired, Red Cross of America, BlueCross BlueShield, and GE. He has leadership experience managing and designing for medium to large UX projects for web and mobile. He also has extensive experience working with highly effective teams of Product Designers, Research Practitioners, and Interactive/UI Designers. Luis has also taught UX/UI and Video courses at SCAD, PSU, and the Art Institute. Luis lives with his family in Portland, OR.
MFA, Video, Savannah College of Art and Design, GA
BFA, Communications, American University, Washington DC
BFA, Communications, American University, Washington DC
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Thanks for visiting and reviewing the work.
Contact me if you want to learn more about my product design services or just to say hi.
Thanks for visiting and reviewing the work.
Contact me if you want to learn more about my product design services or just to say hi.
Thank you for your message!
I will get back to you as soon as I can.
Be well - Luis
I will get back to you as soon as I can.
Be well - Luis
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ENDORSEMENTS:
I was fortunate to work directly with Luis. He displayed a thoughtfulness and consistency to his UX approach that produced great results. Luis is a talented visual designer as well and can quickly and accurately communicate complex thoughts through intriguing UI designs. I would gladly recommend Luis and look forward to working with him in the future.
Robert Osborne
Software Engineer | Autodesk
I've worked with Luis during my entire engineering career at Vacasa. At the beginning of my engineering career, Luis ramped me up to speed on all of our Agile ceremonies and even shared with me a book on different kinds of Agile methodologies. When working on new features of our product Luis was always miles ahead of our development team. Luis was able to provide full prototypes and was very flexible to make ad-hoc changes. Luis's greatest strength is in his time management skills. Luis can meet with several departments of Vacasa and still find time to crank out amazing designs. When working on new products Luis always put himself into the front lines to listen to customer feedback. This results in designs that are driven to increase the user experience. I'm going to miss working with Luis but I know that he will provide himself as a valuable asset to any development team. If given the chance I would love to work with Luis again!
Luis' UX skills span aesthetic UIs, product, and workflow design and team graphics (i.e., amazing team laptop stickers). Each design and mock is backed by thorough testing, user research, and iteration. Luis served as an embedded UX designer with my engineering team supporting internal tools for customer service agents. Luis effectively collaborated with engineers by identifying modular reusable component patterns and performing design reviews on engineer's work. His teamwork extends beyond immediate coworkers in the form of mentoring junior designers and aiding other teams in design work. The most impressive, data-backed user research I have seen Luis's research for overhauling legacy customer support pages. Luis focused on the initiative's goal to reduce agent wrap time and identified the key tasks and metrics representing the department's worst inefficiencies. To augment his research, Luis led a cross-department meeting to gather requirements from stakeholders and technical partners. Luis turned ad-hoc, unplanned pages into dynamic, delightful, efficient designs. I would gladly work with Luis to experience his designs and exceptional research.
Information and Interaction Designer | New Relic
Luis is a skilled product designer with a particularly strong understanding of empathetic research methodologies. Always incredibly detailed and thorough, he excels at digging deep into a problem space to understand all requirements and user needs. His skill set doesn't just end there, though, as he is equally strong at applying that same research to innovative user experience solutions, taking any and every project from idea to development. I highly recommend Luis for any role where you need a competent professional who knows the ins and outs of all things product design.
Senior UX / Product Designer | Simple
I wish there was more of Luis in the world. Sharp as a chef's knife, quick with a laugh and always willing to help out a fellow designer - he is an ideal colleague. Having worked alongside him for two years in the UX Department at Viewpoint I benefited immensely from his seasoned perspective and mentorship and recommend him wholeheartedly. Luis not only took me under his wing, showing me the ropes of the organization but also worked with me weekly answering my questions and developing my own UX practice including user research, stakeholder communication, and data synthesis among other skills. Beyond my own work, I was able to see how Luis tackled difficult, nuanced problems and clearly delineated his design solutions through his projects. He can talk to anyone + always projects a warmth that clearly draws people to him. Watching him run our Intern Initiative always reminded me how good he is not just at designing but also at mentoring and educating others regardless of background or experience. I look forward to the day when I get to work with Luis again.
Luis is a multi-talented, dedicated designer that any team would be lucky to have. He wields his design tools with expert knowledge and skill, demonstrating an impressive level of design thinking. His long background in UX and Interactive design make him a valuable gem at WebMD. I know that Luis also takes time regularly to sharpen his skills and his knowledge through constant learning, keeping them always-fresh, and benefiting the whole team by sharing these resources. He is a rare combination of expert, and humble learner, which makes him a fantastic team player, who is always a pleasure to work with.
I don't know if there is enough room here to express how exceptional Luis Ponce de Leon truly is. I am one of those people who had the opportunity to work with him on a daily basis and experience the magic that he brings to an organization. I hired Luis to design advertising, marketing and web materials in our Portland office. I needed someone entrepreneurial, who could basically run a small design division by themselves. I had a million talented applicants for this job, but Luis stood apart from all of them. He almost seemed too good to be true. Luis helped me develop a design agency within the larger Fisher organization. He helped to create pricing structures, user experience guidelines, implemented project management tools, helped to develop the Fisher branding, and worked with clients and sales to produce truly cutting edge advertising campaigns. He also created our TV and and web advertising for the Fisher brand. Luis has a highly developed creative side that he beautifully balances with his technical skills. His creativity is always appropriate to the project and client. He has the rare ability to design for clients and not for himself. He also has a feel for many different styles of design, which allows him to be incredibly flexible with different brands and messaging. Luis works for outcomes, not his own ego. His innate understanding of what makes great design and user experience is highly relevant to almost any project. I cannot recommend Luis higher to ANYONE looking for a multi-dimensional designer. Here are a few things that set him apart:
• Ability to combine extreme technical ability with a rare creative eye
• Incredibly dedicated and responsive • Patient and calm with even the most difficult clients
• Rare flexibility with design – he is able to design any style for any client
• Can-Do attitude that is truly above and beyond • No hand holding necessary- supremely self motivated and dedicated
• Very high end technical abilities that allow him to design almost anything: Flash, After Effects, Video Editing, Web Design, Brand Design... Etc etc.
• Ability to charm everyone who meets him with his dry sense of humor and calm demeanor I felt so lucky to find someone that I could always depend on and trust. I never had to worry if something would get done or be done well. This is the peace of mind that working with a true professional like Luis brings.
I really cannot wait to see how much success he brings to his next company. I have to be honest-- I’m going to be jealous of anyone who hires him and gets to experience his magic first hand.
I've had the pleasure of working with Luis over the past 4-5 years as one of my expert instructors. He always delivered above my expectations, delighting his students with real-world video projects and his own creative Spanish flare. Luis was a consistent help on numerous video projects, telling a compelling story, and handling complex technologies with ease. With a truly wonderful personality, I know he is an asset to any team. I'm glad to know him as a friend and look forward to working with him in the future.
I had the pleasure of working with Luis, as a full-stack developer who was translating his UX designs into code. Not only is he a brilliant designer, but he is a wonderful person to have around. Smart, humble, hard-working, and great at what he does. He recommended some really amazing, and sometimes esoteric, books and articles that truly benefited me. The designs and mocks that he made were beautiful, functional, and actually fun to create in the frontend. I'm am saddened he is no longer a part of our team, but the tools he has helped to modernize will continue to shine and make the lives of our customers much easier. Wherever he ends up next, is acquiring an abundance of experience and skill, as well as warmth and humanity.
Luis is that extremely rare combination of creativity, high technical competence, and humanity. He is truly gifted in all three areas. He listens to his client and uses his creative skills in the most appropriate way for the task. He has a full grasp of the user experience and keeps all this in mind while employing his significant Flash development skills. He is a strong team player and brings humor and balance to the workplace. Hire him at ANY opportunity!
In working with Luis, I was constantly inspired by his ability to conceive of, and execute on, concepts that went far beyond the simple and obvious solution. Lu's designs always challenged the other Art Directors and Designers to raise the bar and bring something more meaningful to all of our projects. In addition to this, Lu has a positive and energetic personality that is a pleasure to be around in a working environment.
We brought Luis in to create an educational and quasi-promotional video to highlight a new service we were offering at Sage. Throughout the process Luis was patient, consistent and helpful. Though we had to shelve the project a few times, Luis was flexible and gave us terrific guidance. The end result was very well received and was featured prominently on our web site and in other promotional activities. It was a great experience working with Luis. I was very pleased with the entire project.
Luis was always a pleasure to work with. Not only did he do fantastic creative work, but working with him and collaborating with him was always beneficial and pleasurable. He could always be relied and counted upon.
